“An alabaster flask of very expensive ointment”
A woman came to Him with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, which she poured on His head as He reclined at the table. (Matthew 26:6–13 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A lavish, slightly wasteful gesture; the disciples' objection seems reasonable.
The cultural key
The sealed alabaster flask held imported nard; Mark prices it at three hundred denarii: a year's wages, likely a family's stored treasure or dowry. Pouring it on the head is the gesture of anointing, how prophets made kings (Samuel over Saul and David), and 'Messiah' means precisely 'the anointed one.' Jesus adds the second meaning: bodies were anointed with perfumes for burial, and his burial will be too hurried for it (the women arrive Sunday with spices, too late).
Recovered meaning
One act carrying both truths at once: a coronation and an embalming. It is the only royal anointing Jesus receives, given by a woman the room scolded, days before a kingship enacted on a cross. 'She has done a beautiful thing.'